Health Literacy

In a study published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research, the eHealth Literacy Scale (eHEALS) was shown to be an effective measure of patient eHealth literacy, supporting providers to better target health IT initiatives to boost patient engagement. eHEALS is the most popular assessment in...

Dr. Izione Silva, PhD, the Language, Culture, and Engagement Coach for the Disparities National Coordinating Center provides a PDF with links to an online course, a handy toolkit for providers, and a model for integrating health literacy at healthcare practices.

This article summarizes a new study from Vanderbilt University, where researchers followed 1,379 patients hospitalized for acute heart failure. After accounting for the patients’ age, gender, race, insurance, education, other medical conditions and hospital length of stay, the researchers found...

Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ)-funded researchers have developed four tools to measure an aspect of health literacy—individuals' reading comprehension in a medical context. AHRQ includes two new tools that allow direct comparison of health literacy in speakers of English and...

Visit Health Literacy Online, a guide from the Health and human Services (HHS) Office of Disease Prevention and health promotion, where you can learn how to build user-friendly webpages and digital tools.

Visit the Health Literacy Tool Shed from the National Institutes of Health for various health literacy measuring tools. Among those of particular relevance are the following:
General Health Numeracy
Diabetes Numeracy
Literacy Assessment for Diabetes
High Blood Pressure and Smoking Media Literacy...

The Health Resources and Services Administration prepared a collection of health literacy resources, designed to help those interested in building health literacy programs, along with training and technical assistance.

This article highlights how to promote patient health and digital literacy in keeping patients connected to their health and wellness between doctor visits. Common hurdles are identified as well as solutions, such as applying the patient teach back method when fostering an understanding of health...

Phone-based health literacy assessments produce more reliable results for older adult patient groups, according to a study in the Journal of Medical Internet Research. Researchers seeking to understand the web-surfing behaviors of older patients are advised to assess them in person or by phone,...

The American Heart Association (AHA) issued a scientific statement indicating that health literacy is a significant barrier preventing many patients from achieving good cardiovascular health or benefiting from effective treatment for heart attacks, heart failure, strokes, and other heart-related...

Izione Silva, PhD, the Language, Culture, and Engagement Coach for the Disparities National Coordinating Center, explains in this downloadable PDF how low-literate patients often experience striking disparities in health due to unmet social needs. He describes how referrals to non-medical supports can overcome such healthcare barriers.

According to the Journal of Hospital Medicine, researchers from Massachusetts General Hospital have determined that low health literacy is linked to hospital length of stay. The investigators studied an in-hospital group of patients from October 2012 and November 2015. The Brief Health Literacy...

According to Accenture, half of U.S. consumers are unable to navigate healthcare system complexities, prompting avoidable calls to customer service centers and choices of health benefits that cost them more when they do not know what to select or what is covered. Accenture found that, “Consumers...

University of Florida researchers concluded that low health literacy contributes to the risk of preventable emergency department (ED) visits, especially those that involve hospital readmission. Their findings were published in the September 2017 issue of the Academic Emergency Medicine (AEM)...

As people age, their risk of degrading literacy skills can occur, reports a health blog. According to researchers in the UK, if people maintain Internet use along with civic engagement, they are less inclined to erode their health literacy.

Obtain the the most current version of the National Standards for Culturally and Linguistic Appropriate Services in Health and Health Care (the National CLAS Standards) from the Office of Minority Health.

According to a national health survey taken by Professional Research Consultants (PRC), 23.3 percent of the U.S. population has low health literacy. This means such people have difficulty understanding health-related information. The phone and Internet survey involved a random sample of 1,000...

The American Academy of Nursing (AAN) is urging nurses to advance patient health education and health literacy as part of its yearly policy brief. Literacy involves patients understanding and using terminology and concepts to become more engaged in their own health. AAN has found that only 12...

Dr. Izione Silva, PhD, the Language, Culture, and Engagement Coach of the Disparities National Coordinating Center explains in this downloadable PDF that better medication management could be considered a core quality improvement practice to improve health outcomes through enhancements in patient understanding, adherence, care coordination, and resulting reductions in hospitalizations and ED visits.

Low health literacy poses a barrier to electronic health record (EHR) use by patients, according to University of Texas at Austin researchers. In a study published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research, investigators found low health literacy is associated with negative health outcomes and...

Based a survey of 210 nurse practitioners (NPs) by Merck Manuals, 88 percent of NPs believe they spend at least half their appointment time educating patients on diagnoses, treatments, and prescriptions. Significantly, 45 percent of NPs reported that their patients’ lack of understanding is a...

This Pharmacy Times article highlights the impact that health literacy has on hospitals readmissions. Specifically, it noted that $12.6 billion in increased hospital costs result from low health literacy. Meanwhile, it cites a broader figure of low health literacy costs lying between 7–17 percent...